“Me leve sempre ao cinema, vos suplico Santa Emma”: o cinema e as elites em Feira de Santana (1912-1938)

Abstract

By the end of the 19th and the first few decades of the 20th century, the elites of Feira de Santana were fostering a whole set of urban transformations in order to deal with a significant boom in the city`s population but also to strengthen the local commercial activities. The ideals of newness, modernity, progress and civility were mobilized by those who were redesigning the city according to their interests and based on European and American aesthetic standards, so that their power could be maintained or even reinforced. In order to achieve this, the elites occupied several institutions, among them the philharmonic societies, the Santa Casa de Misericórdia, the local newspapers, the dramatic guilds, the shooting society and the local cinema, represented in most of the time frame studied here by the Teatro / Cineteatro Sant'Anna. Based on this premise, this study seeks to understand how the relationship between the elites and the cinema took place in Feira de Santana. The time frame goes from 1912 to 1938, starting with a quarrel between two municipal councilors (Quintiliano Martins, colonel, and Celso Valverde Martins, major and businessman) that took place inside the theater, after a movie session, and ends one year after the launch of the Code of Postures which, in 1937, designed to revamp the city from then on.